It’s a blustery Monday morning in Hobart with a dusting of snow on the mountain. I’m in a North Hobart cafe sitting across from Chris Champion who, a week earlier, had launched the rebrand of his Forty South magazine and a new website – this one. During a brief conversation at the website launch event, Chris had told me that he had some money for content, and I’d responded that I’d gladly help him spend it! So here I was, a week later, on one of the coldest days of the year, pitching a half-baked idea about swimming.
I’d better start out by saying that, although I’m comfortable in the water, and grew up around the ocean, I’ve never been much of a swimmer. I can swim well, but for me swimming has always been something done in pursuit of something more exciting like surfing or diving. For a lot of people, however, swimming is an end in itself, and a year spent floating around Tasmania’s waterways sounded all right to me. So I was glad when Chris unknotted his brow and agreed to the idea.
A few weeks later, at Taroona Beach …
It’s the second-last day of winter but it feels like we’re well into spring. Any aspirations of presenting myself as some kind of Wim Hof-styled iceman plunging into a wild, frigid ocean have been dashed by the first warm weather Hobart had experienced in weeks.
I’m at Taroona beach with my friend Alex McKeand, her mum Roseanne and her border collie Bill. Roseanne keeps an eye on our belongings and occupies Bill, who’s been known to suffer from separation anxiety. Alex and I wade out into the murky green water of the Derwent, kick off and head south towards Hinsby.
“The water’s not that bad,” I say to Alex, something I take back seconds later as it infiltrates my wetsuit. I check my dive watch – 10 degrees.
This is cold enough to freeze my face as soon as I dip below the surface. Although Alex claims not to be “swim fit”, I feel like she could easily outpace me if she wanted to, despite her lack of fins.
Taroona Beach is nearly perfect for swimming – shallow, sandy and sheltered. Patches of kelp-covered reef and bommies that appear at low tide give you something to look at. It’s close to town and safe from all but the largest swells. Today is bright and sunny, but recent rains and bad weather have stirred up the water, giving us only the occasional glimpse of sand or reef. There are no signs of the crayfish and sea dragons I know call the area home.
After a while we turn around into the glittering light reflecting off the surface and start swimming back the way we came. A pied cormorant swoops low over our heads. We set a goal to swim around a marker some way off the beach. About half way to our mark we see the forecast wind blowing in across the river. We round the mark and the wind carries us back to shore.
My first “wild swim” was pleasant, though hardly a life-changing experience. Over breakfast, I ask Alex about her thoughts on swimming. ”Swimming is the only time I can totally switch off,” she says. “I like cold swimming – your body has a physical reaction to the cold that you can control with breathing techniques. Cold swimming supposedly has great health benefits.”
I should be clear that swimming in the ocean in Tasmania in winter is not unusual – many surfers and divers enjoy their sport through the winter months where water temperatures can dip below 10 degrees. When Alex talks about “cold swimming”, this is not the kind of cold she is talking about.
“I was in New York during the polar vortex a few years ago. I’d been seeing everyone in Australia having a great summer and I had to go swimming. The pool was frozen so we went to the beach, which was frozen. My hair froze in icicles and my bathing suit froze solid as I got out of the water.”
You have to be keen, but Alex explains that, for her, “Not being able to swim, is like not being able to go outside.”
She has a long list of places that she’s been swimming: in front of glaciers in Greenland, Dove lake on Cradle Mountain, Samoa, the trans-Derwent twice … She also has a long list of places that she still wants to swim.
During the next year I’m going to make my own list of interesting places to swim: lakes, rivers, islands and coast lines. I don’t have any goal in mind – I’m not training for an ironman or trying to test my physical limits – but hopefully I can find a different perspective on some familiar landscapes.
Fraser Johnston is a filmmaker and Emmy-nominated Director of Photography based in Hobart. He specialises in natural history, science and documentary storytelling. He works commercially under the name Spectral Media and has worked on broadcast productions for National Geographic, Netflix and Terra Mater, as well as numerous online short form films and factual web series. Find Fraser's work online at spectralmedia.com.au and follow him on social media @Spectralpics (Instagram) and Spectral Media.
